Riding the rolling waves

One autumn night half a century ago, a young assistant classics professor went for a drive that would change the course of his — and Princeton's — future.

The professor, Robert Goheen '40, traveled to the home of longtime University trustee Dean Mathey, Class of 1912, to speak with him and his fellow trustees, who were nearing the end of an 18-month national search for a new president to replace the retiring Harold Dodds GS 1914. Goheen thought he had been summoned there to talk about what young faculty wanted in a new University president.

But the meeting had been a trick, one last chance for the trustees to look over their young prospect before taking the bold action of plucking the 37 year old from his junior post and anointing him to lead the University.

Goheen took Princeton's helm on June 1, 1957, becoming the youngest man to assume the University's presidency since the 18th century. He kept the post for 15 years and was a witness to the changing face of the undergraduate student body, the surging social movements of the 1960s and the tumult of the Vietnam War.

During his tenure, Goheen led key initiatives that have made Princeton what it is today, overseeing the largest campus expansion in the University's history, the quadrupling of the University's annual budget and the transition to coeducation.

Goheen's willingness to act swiftly and aggressively was evident on his first day in office, when he revoked official University recognition of conservative Catholic Chaplain Hugh Halton. The move came after Halton accused the University's religion department of lacking the competence needed to teach courses on Roman Catholicism.

The challenges kept coming.

That winter, 23 students — most of them Jewish — were denied eating club bids in what Goheen now calls "the worst situation" of his first year in office. At the time, all sophomores who bickered were supposed to be assured a spot in one of the selective clubs to avoid the alienation that wholesale rejection could cause. But "Dirty Bicker" highlighted just how deeply rooted segregation and discrimination were in the Princeton of the late 1950s.

Weeks later, Goheen faced a proposed split in the modern languages department that set off a bitter internal battle among faculty members.

"I don't think we could have had more serious problems than we've had this year, at least in regard to Princeton's standing in the public eye," Goheen told The Daily Princetonian at the end of the 1957-58 academic year.

Though it was true, stronger upheavals would surge in the years to come.

Campus unrest

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Princeton was not immune to the forces of instability that shook college campuses across the country in the 1960s, but the pressures of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War hit the campus more softly than they did elsewhere.

Nonetheless, Goheen said, experiencing such protests firsthand was jarring. In one instance in 1963, an angry crowd of undergraduates hanged him in effigy outside Prospect House. "I had never seen a student mob in action," Goheen said. "It's an inhuman creature. It's scary. You look at it, and their eyes are glazed over, and they don't look like human beings."

While many college protests of the era focused on the Vietnam War — and some led to violence, including the infamous Kent State shootings in 1970, during which four students were killed and nine wounded — Princeton's protests managed to avoid violence. "Princeton went through that very difficult period of student unrest better than almost any other university I know," President Tilghman said. "The University maintained order [and] civility, and yet provided opportunities for students to express, in the strongest possible terms, their opposition to the war."

Tilghman said she has looked to Goheen's handling of the period when dealing with national traumas during her own presidency. "When 9/11 happened, I went back and read about that period because I thought we might see a period of equivalent unrest," she said. "I did the same thing when the Iraq War was declared. I was looking for wisdom about how Bob Goheen handled that very difficult time as well as he did."

The University weathered the storm of the early years of the Vietnam War relatively unscathed but had a tougher time forging a path to coeducation.

In March 1966, nearly a decade into his time as president, Goheen responded to a questionnaire by the Yale Daily News, saying he opposed integrating women into the student body. "Princeton has been able to combine high standards with a lively and interesting campus life without coeducation," he wrote, "and we are not at present disposed to trade what we have for a different pattern."

But as the national landscape changed in the years that followed, Goheen adapted.

"One of the great senses of Bob Goheen was that he was someone who was constantly evolving," said University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee '69, who was a reporter for the 'Prince' during the years leading up to coeducation. "Here was someone who was clearly responding to new evidence that led him to believe that something had to change. He understood that this really was something that Princeton needed to do."

In May 1967, Durkee caught the campus by surprise with a 'Prince' story revealing Goheen's newfound openness to coeducation. "It is inevitable that, at some point in the future, Princeton is going to move into the education of women," Durkee quoted Goheen as saying. "The only questions now are those of strategy, priority, and timing."

After the story was published, Goheen said he thought his conversation with Durkee had been off the record, but the next month he approached the trustees with a recommendation that the University implement coeducation.

"Getting coeducation accepted was probably my biggest single achievement," Goheen said, recalling his success in pushing the policy through. "It was very gratifying. The presence of women changed the character of Princeton for the better. That's something I am proud of."

Tilghman, the University's first female president, lauded Goheen's achievement.

"There is no question I am here because of Bob Goheen," she said. "I, as a woman, am here because of Bob Goheen. He is credited, correctly, with bringing coeducation to Princeton and for bringing coeducation in a way that was accepted very quickly. And it was really due to Bob Goheen's inherent sense that to be a great university you needed to have on its faculty, on its staff, in its student body, representatives of all parts of America."

The growing University

Plagued with severe financial problems, even the "radical" tuition increases Goheen proposed during his first year were not enough for the ailing institution. His solution was ambitious: a fundraising push that would become the University's first comprehensive capital campaign.

Conceived during the closing years of the Dodds administration, the $53 million capital campaign was launched less than two years into Goheen's presidency. The goal included $30 million for the construction of new buildings and plant improvements and $20 million for the endowment of faculty positions, the creation of new professorships, research and scholarship, and increased student aid.

The initiative brought success beyond anyone's wildest expectations, with the three-year effort raising almost $61 million from nearly 20,000 separate donations.

"I must say I was really delighted and more than somewhat surprised by the alumni response," Goheen recalled. "It was just wonderful, and we did raise a lot more than we asked for."

The successful capital campaign allowed for the updating and expansion of an aging and increasingly cramped campus. Though Firestone Library, built in 1948, was the only campus construction that had occurred since the Great Depression, the years that followed the campaign saw a frenzy of physical growth.

In all, 38 buildings were constructed or acquired during Goheen's administration, costing more than $108 million. The University's indoor square footage grew by 80 percent. Among the buildings that went up during Goheen's time as president were Robertson Hall, Jadwin Gym, the E-Quad, the dorms of the new quad and new-new quad, and the complex of Peyton, Fine and Jadwin halls.

The physical expansion was paralleled by a similar increase in the financial resources of the University. The annual budget grew from roughly $20 million to $80 million during the Goheen era, and contributions to Annual Giving doubled to more than $3.8 million by 1972, which helped endow more than 20 chairs for members of the faculty.

The faculty grew from less than 500 to more than 700, maintaining a low student-teacher ratio even as the student body grew from just under 3,000 to almost 4,000. The Graduate School doubled in size.

"He really did see an opportunity for Princeton to dramatically alter itself and without sacrificing his fundamental commitment to teaching, to the undergraduate program," Durkee said. "Princeton became a major university with an exceptional focus on undergraduates. Goheen was able to retain that identity but dramatically strengthen the part of that identity that was the major research institution."

Resignation

Goheen's time at the University's helm ended in March 1971, when he announced his resignation while most students were away from campus for spring break. He was only 51 but ready to relinquish power.

"I believe the time has come for someone else to enjoy the rewards and fun of the job — which really do outweigh the headaches and the anguish," he said at the time, adding that he felt he had "given Princeton what I have to give" and that the University "deserves and will profit from fresh leadership to take it through the next 10 to 15 years."

Looking back, Goheen said he chose to resign after the restlessness of the 1960s had died down. "The students who came back that fall had suddenly changed," he said. "They were all peaceful again and were taking up their studies and were behaving the way we were used to students behaving. And we finally got the University's budget back into balance."

The "constrain strain" that had burdened him was "off my back," he added. "I felt it was time to get on to another phase of my life."

After a seven-month search, William Bowen GS '58, the University's first-ever provost, who was widely seen as Goheen's natural successor, was named Princeton's 17th president on Nov. 30, 1971.

After handing over the presidency to Bowen, Goheen served as president of the Council on Foundations and then as U.S. Ambassador to India from 1977 to 1980. Afterwards, he returned to Princeton to become a senior fellow of public and international affairs in the Wilson School.

The past and the future

Goheen's path to Princeton was a winding one. He came to the University 71 years ago as a recent graduate of The Lawrenceville School, having grown up the son of medical missionaries in Vengurla, India.

"It was a very different environment, all right," Goheen said of the 15 years he spent in India during his youth. "The school I went to in India was established by American mission families, and it had an American-style curriculum so we could easily move into school here."

Goheen entered Princeton intending to go into medicine but switched to classics during his freshman year. "I changed my mind when I found that I don't look at blood very easily," he said. "I saw the amount of lab work required to go the premed route, and it was so heavy it was pretty unattractive."

Goheen's closest faculty adviser was classics professor Whitney Oates '25, who suggested the young scholar consider concentrating in his department. "I'd always liked literature," Goheen recalled, "and Professor Oates was a wonderful professor and a really warm guy who steered me all through college and many years afterward."

Goheen added that he thinks the strong education he received is still available today. "Undergraduate education has a more central focus at Princeton than at our rival institutions," he said. "We're a more integrated university than any of these other places. They admire the extent to which our faculty and administration work together, and the quality of our programs that comes out of that."